Deleting E-mail Could Get You In Trouble

Sterling D. Allan writes "A story in the Deseret News cautions governments and corporations from deleting legitimate email. Expensive measures are being called into place to archive the mail for future subpoena purposes. Think Enron on one hand. Think Monicagate on the other. Next they'll ask us to keep recordings of all our phone conversations? Big brother gets bigger -- with good reasons, as always. What about all those business propositions I get from Nigeria. Do I have to keep those too? "Get rich from home" (to pay for the purchase of a new hard drive to contain all your spam). One man's junk is another man's treasure. You never know what an IRS agent might find lucky."

Comments

I'm not that bothered

[Ckwop]

I have no real problem with companies being subject to tighter restrictions. However, these restrictions shouldn't be too sweeping. If I send an e-mail to my friend using my Work's e-mail address the government should not be allowed to view that e-mail without a warrant.

Moreover, there should be a legal definition of what to keep and what can be tossed. I could imagine something like:

"a message that amounts to an instruction to an employee or specifying of company policy.." etc.

I don't want to store twenty thousand pieces of spam that every user might collect over two years. That makes e-mail quite an expensive tool if you have to do that.

There is one question I do have. Did the government have the power to collect so much information in the past? How many years worth of company paper memo's were stored? I suspect the ability was much reduced so in which case so why do they need so much more data?

Simon.

Re:I'm not that bothered

[Tim C]

If I send an e-mail to my friend using my Work's e-mail address the government should not be allowed to view that e-mail without a warrant.

But how do they know that what you sent was a personal email, without reading it? When you send an email from your work account, you are effectively speaking on behalf of your company. If you want to send a personal email, you should use a personal email account.

How many years worth of company paper memo's were stored? I suspect the ability was much reduced so in which case so why do they need so much more data?

I suspect that if paper records were as easy to store as electronic ones, they would have required just as much to be retained. A couple of SAN-type things the size of an office filing cabinet would no doubt be capable of storing all the records your company is likely to ever create; the actual filing cabinets may only be sufficient for a couple of years' worth of paper records.

Re:I'm not that bothered

[moonbender]

I suspect that if paper records were as easy to store as electronic ones, they would have required just as much to be retained.

Interestingly enough, although electronic records are easier to store than paper ones, they are also far more easily deleted. Deleting email is easier than throwing away a paper letter. And what's more important, deleting a thousand or ten thousand emails isn't a lot more difficult than deleting just one. It's psychologically easier, as well, since paper documents have a more significant, official feel to them.

Re:I'm not that bothered

[sql*kitten]

Interestingly enough, although electronic records are easier to store than paper ones, they are also far more easily deleted. Deleting email is easier than throwing away a paper letter.

Except that's not actually true. If you have a paper letter, you tear it up, it's gone. Of course it can be photocopied, but still, those copies can (relatively) easily be found.

Delete and email - what if it's still in your mail folder? Many clients mark deleted emails as such then only carry out the purge when they "compress" the mail store. Maybe there's a copy still on the server, the delete instruction hasn't reached the other half of the cluster yet. Maybe there's a copy on the backup tape. Maybe the system is configured so that mail is logged on delivery, and deleting it from your client doesn't touch the master log.

Deleting email is actually far, far harder than destroying a letter.

How can they tell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they mandate that you use an email system that keeps track of deletions? If not, there seems to be a bit of a hole there...

Tightening the noose

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

I'm not really opposed to this, and it does seem to be in direct opposition to a lot of "company e-mail policies" as it's written too.

I dont think that companies should get a pass on these types of written correspondences. These days, it's just too easy to hatch a "dominate the globe" policy at the corp. level and then eliminate the evidence through a "document destruction policy" like those at Arthur Anderson/Enron/MS/etc.... I've seen a clear policy of "destroy everything" with regard to e-mail and written transactions at almost every company I've been at. Seems more like the policy is geared towards eliminating any incriminating evidence rather than simply keeping space on the server to a manageable level. That's too bad, because I've seen some smoking guns that SHOULD be loosed on the world.

On the other hand, these types of policies are instituted because it's just too easy for lawyers to get ahold of those records for the purposes of "fishing expeditions," think SCO and their associated scum. Lawyers can just come in with the vague outline of some scheme and get all of a company's e-mails to help create a real case where none existed before. The cost of handing off an entire archive isn't trivial, and discovery is just too easy to do.

Whatever the outcome, it just seems like you and I (read the little guys) will have ALL of their e-mails "go down on our permanent records" while the big guys will always seem to have a good excuse why the mail server suddenly destroyed all the records for that pending lawsuit. I can just hear the lawyers now...."..yeah, it's funny how only the VP's e-mails dissapeared, and only for a 3 month period, but we've got him on a special server that's set to explode in flames every 90 days."

I think that this type of national policy will ultimately hurt the little guys/companies more than the real targets of such legislation. The big guys will just start having oral meetings without taking notes or some such method of non-trackable information sharing.

As with all government intervention, the "quick-fix" is never really that quick, and the problem is almost never fixed.

I find it interesting...

[bigattichouse]

that its not that big brother is recording our emails - they realize they can't.. so they make it law that we have to spy on ourselves by saving emails. So, If I delete my own emails - can I plead the 5th amendment? But, forcing my employer to spy on me, now that is an interesting work-around to the 5th. Not one I like, just interesting.